Tuesday, July 16, 2013

As if the heat and humidity and rain aren't enough, I just heard the first cicada this year... at seven before midnight. Not a good sign...

On the same topic, here's a photo taken on Deokjeokdo 11 years ago. What you see are the equivalents of skin shed by a snake - the empty shells of cicadas which have outgrown their old exoskeleton and moved along. What's missing from that photo is the utterly deafening sound of the hundreds of cicadas in those trees - while not as loud as the hallways of an elementary school between classes or an atomic blast, it was still rather overwhelming.

Their 'claws' were still so sharp that not only did they continue to hang from the trees, you could hang them from your face, which made Halloween a bit livelier that year.

Which suddenly reminds me of working with some very Christian folk years ago who were very friendly, and in a way I had to admire the surety of their faith, such as when one asked, "I wonder what heaven will be like?" Another answered, "I bet the fishing will be great." Being me, I couldn't help asking, "But what if you ended up in fish heaven? You'd never get a bite." While the one guy conceded that it would be unfortunate, the other, more uptight one said, "That wouldn't be heaven - that would be hell!!"